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Desperate dad begged to look at his burnt son

City Press editor-in-chief Mathatha Tsedu at the Johannesburg high court testifying in the murder trial od his son Avhatakani Netshisaulu. Avhatakali's wife is accused of murdering him.Pic. Veli Nhlapo. 09/09/2008. © Sowetan.
City Press editor-in-chief Mathatha Tsedu at the Johannesburg high court testifying in the murder trial od his son Avhatakani Netshisaulu. Avhatakali's wife is accused of murdering him.Pic. Veli Nhlapo. 09/09/2008. © Sowetan.

Dudu Busani

Dudu Busani

While Mulalo Sivhidzho was conducting interviews with journalists at the scene where her husband was burnt to death in a car boot, Sivhidzho's father-in-law, City Press editor Mathatha Tsedu, pictured, was begging cops to let him see his son's body.

"She was fine," he told the Johannesburg high court yesterday.

"She wasn't collapsing all over the place. She was in charge of her faculties and able to conduct interviews with the media."

Tsedu said he and his wife had driven to his son Avhatakali Netshisaulu's house after his mother, Dzidzananai Netshisaulu, phoned him and told him he was being sandwiched by two cars with no number plates.

He arrived at the house to find that Sivhidzho had left.

"She then phoned me and said the car had been found and that she was now a widow."

Once at the scene of the burning, he begged the police to let him look in the car at his son.

"When they let me in, I looked through what had been a rear windscreen. I was looking into the boot. I saw what looked like human remains. There were stumps of what had been hands and feet and a part of a head."

Tsedu also testified that he could not understand an sms that Sivhidzho had sent him on the day of the funeral.

"We must go to part-two the materials part, materials put us Christians into temptations and do evil things to get materials for this world," it said.

Prosecutor Maro Papachristoforou refrained from showing Tsedu any pictures of the scene, saying it would be insensitive.

Tsedu's son, Avhatakali Netshisaulu, died in 2006 and Sivhidzho and two co-accused, Ntabudzeni Matsenene and Arnold Sello, have been charged with his murder.

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